Indigenous projects to get $800M

Funding announced by prime minister to go toward conserving up to million square kilometres

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $800 million in funding for four massive Indigenous-led conservation projects on Wednesday, further evidence that Ottawa is staking its ambitious biodiversity protection targets on Indigenous partnerships.

The four projects, when finalized, will create protected areas in the Hudson Bay Lowlands in Ontario, a stretch of the Pacific Coast in British Columbia, the Qikiqtani region in Nunavut and parts of the Northwest Territories.

Together the areas would protect up to a million square kilometres, a big step toward the goal of conserving 30 per cent of the country by 2030 — an objective Canada has signed onto domestically and is championing at COP15, the oncein-a-decade nature summit now underway in Montreal.

“Our people have stewarded the land since as long as I can remember, and it’s only been recently, in the last 150 years, that our ability to protect our lands and water have been interrupted,” said Mushkegowuk Council Grand Chief Alison Linklater at the announcement Wednesday.

Linklater, who represents seven communities from the James Bay area, noted the peatlands of the region stores billions of tonnes of carbon, and that Elders call this area the “breathing lands.”

“We are pleased that the Omushkego responsibility and capacity to conserve and steward our sacred lands and waters is being recognized by Canada” and other funding partners, Linklater said.

Both Trudeau and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault emphasized, as they had previously at COP15, that co-operation with Indigenous communities is the only route to successfully protecting nature.

“Protecting 30 per cent of Canada’s lands and waters can only happen with full partnership with Indigenous people. We know that and we’re acting on that,” Guilbeault said.

Wednesday marked the official start of negotiations at COP15, as 18,000 delegates from 196 countries began the arduous process of hammering out an agreement to halt and reverse the decline of biodiversity worldwide — a potential “Paris Agreement for nature,” observers say.